It Still Feels Good!

It still feels good years later.

Most dinners, even nice ones, are enjoyed and soon forgotten. This one stands out in my mind, however. An adult Sunday School class from church had gone out together to a Japanese steak house. It was a lively evening with plenty of good-natured ribbing and lots of laughter. The food was pretty good, too. But the most memorable part came at the end.

A waitress came to pass out the bills to each couple. As she did so, she skipped me. Now, I promise I would have done the same thing anyway, but, being with a church group, I certainly had to be honest and point out the oversight. When I told her that I didn’t get a bill, she replied with a smile, “Sir, yours has already been taken care of.”

I think my mouth dropped open for a minute. Somebody in our group paid my bill! A

great evening had just gotten even better. It wasn’t so much the money I saved that made this such a pleasant surprise; it was the awareness that somebody in the group cared about me and wanted to do something for me. It still makes me feel good when I think about it years later.

Somebody wants to pay your bill, too. Notice, that I said “pay” your bill. Not ignore it or pretend it doesn’t exist, but pay it. And, this is an enormous debt that we’re talking about – one you could never pay off on your own.

Our greatest crisis is not Corona. It’s that we stand convicted of sin, deserving of death. Yet, Jesus, by his death, “canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:14). He paid our bill!

Like with my bill, this is no oversight. It’s not that God didn’t notice all the wrong we’ve done. Not that he just chose to ignore it or pretend it never happened. No, he fully understood the size of the bill and paid it anyway. With the life of Jesus. All of it!

For every baptized believer (see verse 12), Jesus picked up the tab and held it in his hand as it was nailed to a cross with him. To us, God says, “Yours has already been taken care of.”

And we, with our mouths hanging open in amazement, know that it still feels so very good when we think about it, even 2000 years later. Have you let him pay yours?